Review: SOCOM succeeds at basics, fails at essentials

Were SOCOM: Confrontation trying to become a Navy SEAL, it would've rung the …

SOCOM: Confrontation is a troublesome title. Strictly in terms of gameplay, fans of the series already contend that the gameplay of Confrontation is the strongest yet. Putting aside the gruesome opening week for the title which saw server outages that made the game unplayable, this new PS3 version of Sony's premiere online shooter plays great once you're in a match. The problem is that so much of the online experience has been muddled beyond the performance issues that the game feels more like a last-generation experiment than a highly-polished, competitive online shooter.

Confrontation brings the franchise back to its initial roots, with intimate and infantry-focused combat privileging a slower and more methodical style of play. There are no vehicles or spare maps to be found here: just tight, third-person, on-foot action and an intricate balance of close- and long-range armed combat. The game boasts a slightly more realistic bent but enough of an arcade-like feel to make it somewhat more accessible and more fun. Though it may look like a generic shooter, SOCOM is distinctive enough to have made many fans and few detractors since it was established on the PS2 years ago.

The standard array of deathmatch, escort, and territorial modes joins a strong collection of maps with various layouts and size adjustments. The game's seven pack-in maps include some old classics like "Frostfire" as well as a few new originals, and all of the maps are decidedly fun to play on and extremely varied. Much like Warhawk, the different level layouts can at times feel like completely different levels. Through the strong map selection and the excellent core gameplay, Confrontation proves just how well the core mechanics have been brought from the PlayStation 2 to the PlayStation 3 and matured to rival the competition today.

But what the developers seemed to ignore was that Confrontation is first and foremost an online shooter, and where the game fails miserably is in its shamefully flawed execution of the basic online interface and rewards systems that are now the standard for any online shooter. While the ranking system is functional though relatively limited in these days of persistent online rewards for shooters, offering a limited selection of unlockable gear, it's the game's interface that really suffers the most.

Confrontation's online interfaces are arguably one of the most poorly conceived of any recent shooter. The developers refused to mature the original SOCOM interface to catch up with the times, and the result is a clumsy system which requires players to separately pick a server and then a game before ever setting foot on the battlefield. "Channels" are still limited to 256 players, which means you'll spend quite some time chugging through a list of hundreds of numbered channels in search of "US EAST 56" or whichever your friends happen to be in, only to then traverse a second list of rooms.

This wouldn't be a huge problem were it not for the game's horrendous handling of social features. Sending and receiving invites is a pain, and the lack of a true party system and the inability to mute in-game players are a few of the many deficiencies of the game's interface. And given that the game is online-only, the half-baked menu and social community features of Confrontation just don't cut it.

What few interface advancements there have been strictly relate to the clan system. Clans now have customizable logos and colors as well as a home nation which gives the clan access to a nation-specific weapon; there are a number of clan-centric scheduling options which complement an in-game calendar which keeps track of all clan matches and practices, and there are some neat clan-to-clan features to help facilitate clan-level combat. The improvements and the problems combine to make it feel like the "game" is not so much designed for fun but exclusively as a clan tool for testing skill; it's a bare-bones experience and most of the enhancements are clan-oriented.

Ultimately, SOCOM: Confrontation is likely worth the purchase at present solely because it is bundled with the official PlayStation 3 headset. In time, as was the case with Warhawk, most of these problems will be ironed out—though some of the interface problems are at such a fundamental level that one wonders about their patchability. Alas, with so many other polished shooters out there, it seems that the SOCOM franchise has passed its prime. Perhaps that's why the game's previous developers in Zipper Interactive have finally decided to move on.